It’s Been a Sad Vacation

Greetings from Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas where my family vacation continues. While my vacation has been great so far it has also been a sad one as well.

When my vacation first started I learned the news of the passing of Ed McMahon. This was sad to me as I grew up with Mr. McMahon on my television set. From sitting on the side of Johnny with the Tonight Show all the way though watching him host his amazingly popular “Star Search” show.

Then I learned about the death of Farah Fawcett, which was not unexpected, but sad just the same. Farah fought until the end and now she is truly an angel, Charlie would be proud of all she had done.

Then last week I was just going into my hotel room at Disney World to turn the TV on to CNN to catch the entire Michael Jackson ordeal. Many people have many thoughts about Michael but for me my ultimate memories of him are those of his music. There are only a few others who have touched as many peoples lives through their music, a few I can think of that had such power with their music were The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. My favorite two Michael Jackson albums were “Off The Wall” and “Thriller”.

Then we had another celebrity death and this one shocked me and touched my the most and that was the passing of the ultimate pitchman who ever lived, Billy Mays.

Up until a few months ago, I honestly didn’t like Billy Mays. Every time he came on my television I asked myself why he was yelling at me. I never understood him or the work he did until Discovery Channel launched the show “Pitchmen” which stared Billy and his friend Anthony Sullivan.

In this show we got to see the real Billy Mays and I quickly started to like the guy. He seemed like a friendly guy who loved meeting people and extending his hand saying “Hi, I am Billy Mays.”

Over the last few episodes we met lots of Billy’s family, his father, his son, his wife and kids. It seemed family was important to Billy and it showed on his show.

Yesterday just as I got on the ship for my trip to the Bahamas I saw the sad news flashed on the bottom of the CNN News Ticker which was being displayed. Out of all the celebrity deaths over the past week, I felt something inside and actually teared up. Not hearing his screaming “Billy Mays here for (Product name here)” will actually now be missed. Billy you were one of a kind and you will be missed.

So while my vacation with my own family has been great, over the past week with all the losses we have had to me it feels like I have lost part of my extended family.

DirecTV Adds More National HD

DirecTV customers were happy to wake up on Friday morning to find that DirecTV has added another new national HD channel to their lineup. The channel added was BET HD that was added to channel 329.

The timing of this addition couldn’t have been better as I understand BET did an outstanding tribute to the late Michael Jackson last night on their 2009 BET Awards Show.